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President's Task Force on the NCTM Standards: Report of the MAA ARG

REPORT OF THE MAA ARG

President's Task Force on the NCTM Standards

Kenneth A. Ross, Chair

In our response to the NCTM's earlier series
of questions, we were guided by a couple of principles in the hopes of
being as helpful as possible. First, we tried to make our responses
relatively brief and to the point. Second, we worked hard, and
successfully, to obtain consensus on our reports. Consensus did not mean
that every task-force member supported every statement with enthusiasm, but
it did mean that they were all able to live with the reports.

Our assignment now is to respond to PSSM,
Principles and Standards for School Mathematics. It seems that we
cannot operate on the principles enunciated above because of the nature and
magnitude of this assignment. Thus this report will be a union of
responses, but with an aim to avoid repetition and to supply the responses
in some logical order. It is simply impossible to expect each task-force
member to study and approve of all the statements made here, so this will
not be a consensus report. On the other hand, since we have worked
together for two years, most of the statements are consistent with the
group's views. Conflicting statements are rare and are highlighted.

More specific comments and suggestions for specific changes made by
individual members of the task force will be sent as a separate
document.

Thomas R. Berger, who is also chair of the MAA Committee on the
Undergraduate Program in Mathematics (CUPM), will be submitting a
separate report. Hung-Hsi Wu has been unable to participate in this
response to PSSM.